ATLANTA -- Frenzied Big Game players lined up at retailers in seven states Wednesday, hoping on a dollar that they might claim the second-largest lottery jackpot in American history.

Stores reported stronger sales hours after the prize swelled to $200 million, its largest ever, for Friday night's drawing. No one correctly matched all five numbers and the Big Money Ball in Tuesday's $150 million game.

''When you get to $150 or $200 million, they say, 'What the heck, I'll put a buck or two on it,''' Michigan Lottery Commissioner Don Gilmer said Wednesday. ''Everybody sort of likes to do a little daydreaming, a little 'Hmmm, what could I do with that money?'''

At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange building, the lone lottery machine was tied up for about 45 minutes by one trader who was buying Big Game tickets for himself and 22 other colleagues.

Each trader had thrown $100 in a pool to buy $2,300 worth of tickets, said the trader, who refused to identify himself.

''We're just doing it for fun,'' the man said. ''Someone in the pit said, 'Let's do it,' and we did.''

The game is played in Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia. But sales traditionally are strongest near state lines, where residents of non-lottery states drive over to buy tickets when the jackpot swells to astronomical levels.

At a RaceTrac service station in Augusta -- one of the first Big Game retailers across the state line from South Carolina -- business was heavier than usual Wednesday, manager Anthony Pizzard said.

He said he expected a crush of customers Wednesday evening, as lottery players left their jobs, and all day Thursday and Friday.

''The machine might get about a five- or 10-minute break -- if it's lucky,'' he said. ''I expect there will be a line in here, all the way up to the last wire. It's a payday, it's a weekend, and people can move a little more freely.''

Big Game mania may drive the jackpot even higher before 11 p.m. Friday when the winning numbers will be drawn in Atlanta. Rebecca Paul, president of the Georgia Lottery Corp., said the $200 million estimate was conservative.

''Where we're going to be Friday is not something any of us anticipated,'' she said.

Still, the Big Game will need to get bigger -- much bigger -- to surpass the national record. In 1998, 13 construction workers in Westerville, Ohio, pooled their money and split a record jackpot of nearly $300 million in the Powerball drawing.

Not that customers plunking down dollar bills for Big Game slips were complaining.

At Jocks N Jills in midtown Atlanta, managers were deciding how many of the sports bar's 78 televisions should display the drawing at 11 p.m. Friday.

In some of the states, billboards set up to display the Big Game jackpot were stuck at $199 million because they weren't built to handle a wider ''2'' for the first digit.

''We're going to have to show 199 from here on out,'' Virginia lottery director Penelope Kyle said. ''We've gone beyond what we were expecting.''

In Danville, Va., Quickie Market owner Lawrence Thomas said he was planning for sales to be extremely heavy. The drawing is at the start of a weekend, he pointed out -- and close to the beginning of a month.

''People will have their Social Security checks,'' he said.

At the RaceTrac in Augusta, Pizzard said people were driving an hour from Columbia, S.C., to buy tickets. One woman bought 600 of them, he said.

But Pizzard wasn't sold on the fever. He cited the game's long odds -- one in more than 76 million for each ticket.

''I've played them before, but I've never been able to win anything,'' he said. ''A dollar's a precious thing.''